Is hacking in to CIA legal?

[helios]

Almost everything is at least indirectly connected to the Internet.

Well, no. Certain facilities have their most secure equipment "airgapped" from the outside world. For example, a few years ago, the US developed a virus (Stuxnet) capable of crossing the airgap (through USB drives and the like) between the public Internet and "nuclear centrifuge equipment" in a plant in Iran in an attempt at sabotage.
Another virus (dubbed badBIOS) has appeared recently capable of communicating with other infected computers through an airgap, by means of PC speakers (the little ones connected to the motherboard), microphones, and high frequency sounds.

[13bSLyTq]

Stuxnet was actually not airgrapping it was actually used Print Spooler exploit & PLC exploits in order to infect and introduce it self to other PC. Nevertheless airgapping means to actually connect to C&C server without any social engineering attempts.

Look at Conficker (abbrevation for Configuration F*cker) it used ***similar*** exploits except it used RPC DCOM instead of Print Spooler.

[ResidentBiscuit]

@helios, this is why I said 'almost' :)

[G30GNwbp]

zero wrote:

No.. Not always. I can guarantee the CIA would not have their internal servers that hold classified data connected to the internet.

In the US information can be classified Top Secret, Secret, and Confidential. Quite a bit of information is classified Confidential and often this information is not as important as people think. Sometimes the reason information is classified is because if combined with other information it could cause problems, but by itself it is uninteresting.

I really doubt that classified information is not regularly sent over the Internet. Information whether classified or not must be transferred.

Sometimes information that should be classified Top Secret is reclassified Secret because the amount people that need this information exceeds the amount of people available with Top Secret clearances.

Spy movies have caused people to have ridiculous ideas about why information is classified and what the information is.

[Dy7SLyTq]

In the US information can be classified Top Secret, Secret, and Confidential. Quite a bit of information is classified Confidential and often this information is not as important as people think. Sometimes the reason information is classified is because if combined with other information it could cause problems, but by itself it is uninteresting.

if you dont believe him read the cuckoos egg.

[ModShop]

IWishIKnew wrote:

The CIA knows this, therefore, they have willingly put information on a publicly available global network of computers.

Can we argue that it is illegal to access publicly available information? Is it not freedom of the press to collect and spread publicly available information?

[snip]

Technically speaking, it's just as free as this website, only they have put lockouts.

Banks willingly put their money into vaults in public areas. Could we argue that is is illegal to take money that's in public areas? The only difference is that the banks put vaults in the way...

No one is going to try and argue that money in vaults is "publicly" available, regardless of how secure or insecure the vault is. The same should hold true for private information on servers, regardless of however vulnerable they may be.

[devonrevenge]

theres no such thing as a black hat hacker anymore, Its all a lie.

[BHX]

Tell that to the black hat hackers like anonymous.

[z05DSL3A]

BHXSpecter wrote:

Tell that to the black hat hackers like anonymous.

I wouldn't say that anonymous are black hats more like fifty shades of grey hats.

[BHX]

I disagree completely.

A "black hat" hacker is a hacker who "violates computer security for little reason beyond maliciousness or for personal gain"

Anonymous is constantly breaking into systems and publishing information that is almost always wrong. They have published addresses in several serious cases and turned out to be the wrong person. The last one they did was for a child molester if I remember right, and the molester was like 30s or 40s and the address they published was to an like 70 year old retired couple who started receiving death threats due to anonymous. Anonymous is malicious because they put out things without ever bothering to verify the information they find.

[ResidentBiscuit]

Think of Anonymous as the digital drone strikes :)